Posted on 03/29/2005 2:16:33 AM PST by JohnHuang2
What the Boston Globe did not mention in its three days of coverage last November of pro-Nazi Harvard during the 1930s is that while Harvard has World War I and II memorials listing as "enemy" three German alumni, Harvard has no memorial to its more than 60 alumni killed while serving in the Confederate army.
These included six Confederate generals plus a number of graduates of Harvard's Medical School, who died while treating the wounded from both sides.
That Harvard honors her German enemy alumni – but none of her American Confederates – is an outrage, particularly since archrival Yale honors its Confederate alumni.
What the Boston Globe reported last November – and what seems so much more appalling than President Larry Summers' statement on males and females – includes the following under the headline "Harvard's Nazi ties" – by historian Stephen Norwood:
"The Harvard University administration during the 1930s, led by President James Conant, ignored numerous opportunities to take a principled stand against the Hitler regime and the anti-Semitic outrages it perpetrated, and contributed to Nazi Germany's efforts to improve its image in the West.
"The administration's lack of concern about Nazi anti-Semitism was shared by many influential Harvard alumni and students. A faculty panel that supervised a mock trial of Hitler in 1934 ruled that Hitler's anti-Jewish actions were 'irrelevant' to the debate.
"Prominent Harvard alumni, student leaders and some faculty assumed a major role in the friendly welcome accorded the Nazi warship Karlsruhe when it visited Boston in 1934, flying the swastika flag. Boston's Jewish community protested vociferously. President Conant remained silent. Officers and crewmen from the warship were entertained at Harvard, and professors attended a gala reception in Boston where the warship's captain enthusiastically praised Hitler.
"That year, the Harvard administration welcomed a top Nazi official, Ernst Hanfstangl, who was Hitler's foreign press chief as well as a virulent anti-Semite, to the campus for his 25th class reunion. The student newspaper, the Harvard Crimson, editorialized that the university should award Hanfstangl an honorary degree 'as a mark of honor appropriate to his high position in the government of a friendly country.'
"The joyous reception Hanfstangl received on campus was interrupted when a local rabbi confronted him and demanded to know what Hanfstangl had meant when he recently remarked that 'everything would soon be settled for the Jews in Germany.' The rabbi cried out, 'My people want to know ... does it mean extermination?' Hanfstangl replied that he '[could] not discuss that. I am on vacation. I am with my old friends.' The Nazi official proceeded to President Conant's house for tea.
"Anti-Nazi activists opposed Hanfstangl's visit. Some put up posters in Harvard Yard, only to have the Harvard police tear them down. Others held a rally in Harvard Square. Seven demonstrators who tried to speak at the rally were arrested and sentenced to six months at hard labor. Conant called the demonstration 'very ridiculous.'
"Several months later, the Harvard administration permitted the Nazi German consul-general to lay a wreath bearing the swastika in the university's chapel, beneath a tablet honoring Harvard men killed fighting for Germany in World War I.
"During the next several years, Harvard participated in academic student exchanges with Nazi universities. In 1936, Harvard contributed significantly to Nazi Germany's effort to gain international respectability by accepting Heidelberg University's invitation to send a delegate to its 550th anniversary festival.
"Heidelberg had expelled its Jewish professors, reshaped its curricula to reflect Nazi ideology and staged a massive public burning of books by Jews. The Germans had exploited the recently concluded Winter Olympics in Bavaria to extol Nazism. It should have been obvious they would do the same at Heidelberg. American newspapers described the Heidelberg festival as a 'brown-shirt pageant' in which Nazi leaders delivered anti-Semitic harangues."
Retired University of Massachusetts professor David S. Wyman, who is considered the leading scholar of America's response to the Holocaust, said in an interview:
"Harvard should issue an apology without excuses and say, 'We as an institution would never conduct ourselves like that again.'"
Harvard officials categorically reject Norwood's findings. ''If there are new facts, they should be added to the archives of history and the dialogue of those times," spokesman Joe Wrinn said in a prepared statement. But he added: ''Harvard University and President [James Bryant] Conant did not support the Nazis."
At last November's Yale-Harvard football game in Cambridge, I was on the sidelines when I saw President Summers tossing a football to a young boy – which evolved into cheers.
I asked Dr. Summers about what the Boston Globe had just reported – and about the outrage of honoring Harvard alumni who fought for Germany as enemies – but no such honoring of Americans who were Harvard Confederates.
"Write me a letter," he kept repeating. So I did. I sent it certified mail. And I received a delivery receipt signed by a "D. Brainard." Summers' office has confirmed that he received my letter – which he asked me to write.
President Summers, however, has never responded to it.
Let AIPAC be informed about this news and they will be happy to quiz Harvard Universtiy about this anti-semitic trend.
This prohibition was first established by the last Postmaster General just before the beginning of the Civil War. He was a Southern advocate for slavery and sought to stop Abolitionists from using the mails to spread their story of freedom.
Hectograph was an inexpensive and quick way to produce their materials.
Over the years I have pointed this out to various Postmasters General (and the appropriate officers within the USPS) noting that at a minimum USPS should simply delete the provision since no one uses Hectograph anymore anyway.
Unfortunately there remain those within the bowels of USPS and on the Board of Governors who continue to hanker after the mores and standards of Old Dixie and they won't budge.
It's almost the reverse of the Harvard problem, but it stems from the same set of mind.
I think the writer should understand that most Yankees like Nazi's better than Johnny Reb.
May interest.
dixieping
I have a newfound respect for Yale.
Where did you get that map of islamic terrorists in US?
That's total bull crap. If anything, it's paranoid sectional fanatics like you who harbor irrational hate for people you identify as "Yankees."
Those damn cats just won't stay in the bag will they?
/jasper
What about neoconservative Yankees, the ones who are driving the GOP hierarchy's slow-walk away from the Southern strategy, the South, and congressional Southern conservative GOP'ers?
For elucidation, see Christopher Caldwell's 1998 Atlantic Monthly article, "The Southern Captivity of the GOP". Caldwell was at the time (and may still be) a writer for the Weekly Standard.
It has been opined by others who deem themselves in a position to know, that neoconservatives are unilaterally and cordially hostile to Southerners in general, and Jeffersonians in particular.
Years ago, toiling in a college library's stacks looking for support for a paper, I found some back issues of TIME and LIFE. One of them, from 1940 I think it was, had some coverage of the Harvard Nazi Club, which was described as one of the largest such clubs in the United States. Some of the club's activities were documented with photographs.
You confuse hate with dislike: Why should I welcome people who, clog our Texas freeways, b*tch and moan about our weather, and our people, and our food, and the list goes on.
My dad has a saying: A Yankee is someone from the north who comes for a short visit. A Damn Yankee is one that stays for longer than a month. a G*D-damn Yankee is one that won't leave :)
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